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Stress and Health

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Understanding Health Determinants

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Abstract

Chapter 4 documented the normal stress response mechanisms, yet prolonged stress forms a key ingredient in explanations for how social circumstances adversely affect health. Stress arises from an imbalance between the demands placed on a person and their resources for handling those demands. This chapter outlines the challenges of defining stress and measuring stress reactions; it gives a historical overview of evolving conceptual models of stress. Life events research is then summarized to illustrate stimulus models; a description of response models reviews the contributions of Wolff, Selye, and Antonovsky. Interactional or dynamic models of stress are then described. In explaining the stress response, these consider complex interactions among the person’s environmental context, their perception of the event, their learning from previous experiences, and their resiliency. Factors that determine a person’s vulnerability or resiliency are described, and connections between socioeconomic status and stress responses are summarized. The chapter concludes with a review of the design and effectiveness of stress management programs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Taming of the Shrew illustrates, yet again, how far in advance of his time Shakespeare really was. Science imitates art.

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  1. School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Ian McDowell

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McDowell, I. (2023). Stress and Health. In: Understanding Health Determinants. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28986-6_8

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